New technology to scan shoes, (save time?) at airport

by Grant Martin on

If you’ve ever been irritated by the whole process of taking your shoes off in the airport security line, this news may give you some solace. The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) recently announced that they would be purchasing new technology to scan shoes while passengers wear them. Depending on the technology, machines could use electromagnetic fields, chemical detectors or spurts of air to search for explosives or weapons in the shoes, and would be able to do so without removal.

Could this save time at the airport? Potentially. Without the need to remove and x-ray shoes the lines may move faster, but passengers will also have to queue for the shoe scan as well, right?

My big qualm with the whole shoe scanning exercise is in the uneven enforcement. At many airports around the world, shoe removal, unlike metal detection, is optional. It seems silly that we need complicated shoe scanning technology here in the states when someone could easily forgo the test in Hong Kong, fly across the ocean and still cause problems.

I suppose until an optimal solution is found we’ve always got Velcro.

Take your shoes off, but keep your feet clean – Airplane tip

by Gadling Staff on

Removing your shoes to pass through security doesn’t mean you have to pick up dirt, germs, and everything else left behind by fellow travelers. In a plastic baggie in an exterior pocket of your carry-on, store a bag of hand wipes along with an old pair of socks, or disposable slip-on booties like hospital workers wear.

Slide those on when you slip your shoes off, and after passing through security, peel off those germy socks or booties and return them to their resealable bag for your return trip, while putting clean feet in your shoes.

Use the hand wipes and you’re good to go — germ-free!

TSA to swab passengers’ hands at airport

by Grant Martin on

Wash your hands before you went to the airport? You may want to. This week, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is beginning new, extra security measures at our nation’s airports: hand swabs.

Have you ever had a bag “randomly” selected for supplemental screening after pushing it through the X-ray? In addition to the manual search, agents often swipe your bag with a clean cloth and put the material into a shoebox-sized detector. They’re checking for the residue of bomb-making material — potentially undetectable by eye but sniffable by the robot.

That same residue will stick to your hands if you’re not careful, which is what the TSA is hoping to identify in their random hand swabs. It’s just speculation, but our guess is that the underwear bomber had traces of PETN on his hands, so the TSA now thinks that they can foil plots better by checking those members.

Provided, that is, that they swab the right person’s hands. As with many of the TSA’s initiatives, this new hand-swabbing effort is a random operation, so if the perpetrator gets lucky and doesn’t get swabbed — well, then the problem moves onward.

Check out these other stories from the airport checkpoint!

Decoding TSA security bins

by Amy Chen on

Bin advertising at TSA security checkpoints has been around for a couple years. What’s new is that more airports are rolling out bins that are now labeled with letters and numbers.

I first noticed the stickers in early January when flying from JFK to Seattle. I hadn’t seen the labels when traveling over the holidays, so I wondered: were the stickers added after the Christmas Day underwear bomber made it through the checkpoints?

I contacted the TSA and was told that the stickers, which don’t appear on the X-rays, are placed on the bins by the same companies that manage the ads–not TSA.

Some background: the TSA doesn’t get involved with the advertisers and doesn’t collect any money from the ads. Rather, the program is a direct relationship between the advertisers (Zappos.com, Charles Schwab, Hanes, Amtrak, to name a few) and the respective airport authority. In return for allowing the ads, the TSA gets the use of the bins, stainless-steel tables, and carts.

After contacting the TSA, I was directed to SecurityPoint Media, a subcontractor for the bin-advertising program at the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey.

Joe Ambrefe, the president and CEO of SecurityPoint Media, responded to my questions via e-mail and shared the following info:

1. The labels, known as “tether ID” numbers, were developed in 2001 and first used at a U.S. airport in a 2005 pilot program.

2. The bin stickers were created to improve communication at the checkpoint. In the event you’re pulled aside for secondary screening, the tether IDs are meant to help you identify your belongings. (I imagine saying “D11” is more precise than pointing and saying “That one over there.”) It’s also a way for TSA agents to positively identify bins that require a more thorough search.

3. The numbers, which are captured by overhead security cameras, are unique to each airport and do not repeat. (Let’s assume the security cameras are turned on and recording like they’re supposed to.)

So it seems that while the would-be underwear bomber has made these tether IDs more relevant than ever, this program was already well in the works.

My contact at the TSA tells me that the bin-advertising program recently expanded to New York (JFK, LGA, EWR) and Chicago, with possibly more airports on the way. Participating airports already include Denver, Seattle, L.A., and San Francisco. Apparently airport authorities are fans of the advertising program because the bins are replaced with new ads every 90 days, which means clean, new containers for everyone.

Check out these other stories from the airport checkpoint!

Is the body scanner hysteria getting a little out of hand?

by Grant Martin on

With terrorists now hiding bomb components in all corners of their bodies, we now find ourselves at a difficult impasse between more advanced, 3D scanning and passengers’ privacy. Pit the ACLU and the TSA against one another and one is guaranteed a lifetime of bureaucracy, litigation and name calling, nothing of which puts the traveler’s mind at ease.

Inflaming the situation are the mainstream media, left and right howling that these new generations of scanners can see right through you, with great erotic detail — and maybe even into your soul. And that’s when things start to go haywire. It’s true that there are a few different technologies available for 3D scanning, but will anything really show your buck-naked body to a nefarious TSA worker? Drudge Report and bild.de seem to suggest so, showing an attractive woman in full 3D detail on both of their sites.

Further complicating the matter is the buzz on the internet purporting that the negative of the exact same image reveals the person unclothed. The image above on the right was taken from Drudge this morning, while that below is the negative image as processed by Photoshop.

But is the above image real collected data? Not one other picture on the web from an x-ray or microwave scanner yields the same result, and most of them are so muddled and blurry (as a 3D microwave/x-ray scan should be) that it’s impossible to pick out fine details. Gadling’s friend and Photoshop expert proffered this alternative mechanism, suggesting the image is fake:

The girl was backlit, then they take the color out and blur the edges, and then invert the color. Either her top is skintight, or she wasn’t wearing clothes at all, and those were added in a separate layer.

Whether or not the image is manufactured or not, this whole concept of 3D scanning just needs to be accepted. More and more airports are installing the devices, which means at some point in your travel career, some sad TSA worker is probably going to see what’s going on under your sweater. Better start toning up with your Shake Weight now.